Joined: Wed April 27th, 2011, 03:44 GMTPosts: 7568Location: the home for teenage dirt

Giada wrote:

Along with knowing about 20th century notions of appropriation, I'd bet Dylan is also acquainted with the tradition of borrowing within the Graeco-Roman canon. He was a member of his school's Latin Club after all and if there's one thing you learn when studying the Romans is that they stole everything from the Greeks!

I'm studying Classics at school and classicists are very familiar with literary allusions. Most of the major Roman poets used Greek literature as something of a crutch. They borrowed everything from plots to lines. The best known example is probably that of Vergil and his Aeneid. The first six books of the Aeneid are clearly modeled after the Odyssey and its last six after the Iliad. But Vergil also 'borrowed' other things from Homer, including structure and events. For example, the scene in which Venus presents Aeneas with his arms (don't remember the Book, probably 7/8) is very similar to the scene in which Thetis presents Achilles with new armor (Book 19). Or compare the raid of Odysseus and Diomedes (Iliad, Book 9) with that of Nisus and Euryalus (Aeneid, Book 10).

Vergil was actually accused of plagiarism for this and famously replied, "Why don't they try theft of this kind themselves? Because they will find out that it is more difficult to steal a line from Homer than his club from Herakles."

Vergil is just one example, several instances of Roman poets lifting from Vergil have been documented. And the Greeks themselves took from what had come before them.

He said in an interview in the 1980s (I think from Warhol's INTERVIEW magazine) that his favorite writer is Tacitus,(55 AD - 117 AD) senator in ancient Rome and historian of the Roman Empire.

^And in Chronicles he listed some books by ancient writers like Thucydides that he'd read during his first years in NYC, though he gave them the wrong titles. And Lonesome Day Blues has a famous line from the Aeneid.

^And in Chronicles he listed some books by ancient writers like Thucydides that he'd read during his first years in NYC, though he gave them the wrong titles. And Lonesome Day Blues has a famous line from the Aeneid.

The best article on the topic is Thompson's "The Streets of Rome: Dylan and the Classics", which appeared in Oral Tradition a few years ago. The whole issue is on Dylan.

^And in Chronicles he listed some books by ancient writers like Thucydides that he'd read during his first years in NYC, though he gave them the wrong titles. And Lonesome Day Blues has a famous line from the Aeneid.

The best article on the topic is Thompson's "The Streets of Rome: Dylan and the Classics", which appeared in Oral Tradition a few years ago. The whole issue is on Dylan.

Sticking with the classics. The ancient Roman comic dramatists Plautus and Terence used older Greek comedies as basis for their plays, in fact Terence died on a voyage to Greece to find more plays by Menander to adapt for his Roman audience.

Shakespeare and his contemporaries used the plots of Plautus and Terence for their plays.

Shakespeare used the historian and essayist Plutach (c. 46 – 120 AD) in North's late C16th translation for his Roman plays - Here's North on Cleopatra's arrival on her famous barge -

She received several letters, both from Antony and from his friends, to summon her, but she took no account of these orders; and at last, as if in mockery of them, she came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay all along under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted Cupids, stood on each side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes. The perfumes diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with multitudes, part following the galley up the river on either bank, part running out of the city to see the sight. The market-place was quite emptied, and Antony at last was left alone sitting upon the tribunal.....

And here is Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra -

ENOBARBUS.The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water. The poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made The water which they beat to follow faster, As amorous of their strokes. For her own person, It beggar'd all description. She did lie In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold, of tissue, O'erpicturing that Venus where we see The fancy out-work nature. On each side her Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, With divers-colour'd fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, And what they undid did.AGRIPPA. O, rare for Antony!ENOBARBUS. Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, So many mermaids, tended her i' th' eyes, And made their bends adornings. At the helm A seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands That yarely frame the office. From the barge A strange invisible perfume hits the sense Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast Her people out upon her; and Antony, Enthron'd i' th' market-place, did sit alone, Whistling to th' air; which, but for vacancy, Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too, And made a gap in nature.

Incidently, the opening line of part 2 of Eliot's The Wasteland (which is called A Game of Chess, an allusion to the play of that name by Shakespeare's friend and collaborator Thomas Middleton) is -

I don't think I described any 'conscious working method' in my post and I don't know what 'folk process' means.

Thanks for your reply, rev.By folk process, as it's been discribed in discussion of Dylan's early songwriting, I mean the adaption of handed-down tunes and lyrics, which he partly learned via Guthrie, which is very apparent in his early albums. Later on, he moved from the handed-down traditional to allusions of singular literary sources.

the_revelator wrote:

I feel like you're looking for some identifiable turning point where we can definitely pin down when a particular artist or movement or insight became important to him. I don't see how that would be possible. We would only have this information if he has talked to people about it. Being too literal is a trap here.

I'm not looking for any exact points in time, I agree that would be impossible to determine. But as I said above, I feel that there's a gradual progress perhaps not in method (I didn't express that very well, remember I'm not a first language poster), but in the way he uses sources, or even the kind of sources he uses. After the '60s and what he called his period of amnesia, there are the word paintings of ca Planet Waves to Street-Legal, after which he focussed squarely on the Bible (yes, I know he's always used that source) up to ca Infidels. Then he had his movie album(s), mainly Empire Burlesque plus Brownsville Girl, with allusions as well as direct quotes traceable to single sources. His albums of self-penned songs from Under The Red Sky on forward mainly draw on literary sources as accessed via "avid reading". All this opposed to the mid-'60s and mid-'70s (btw, it always irritates me greatly when I see mentioned somewhere Dylan did(does)n't read). He has mentioned how songwriting used to come naturally, but that he had to learn / teach himself how to do it consciously and, no matter how good the result, already had to make an effort in the mid to late '70s. That much I believe him, that the struggle hasn't gone away ever since, esp since via his early work people perceive him as a natural genius that all his later work is judged against.

the_revelator wrote:

What he knows and works from, and always has, is an accretion of knowledge, perception and detail that begin with his first childhood experiences of the world. Everything just gets layered on, day after day after day. Looking for some specific "AHA!" influence that determined some big turn he took at various points in his career - I think creativity is too complex and subtle for people to be able to figure out how most artists do that. Maybe it can be done on a very superficial level.

I've been trying to say this ^^ a few times recently, that I believe once can only create from life experience. I agree though it takes his kind of talent to put all those influences to use in the way that he does. Where does talent (or artistic perception, as you say) come from? (More or less a rhethorical question unless someone wants to explain how the brain works.) Can I say talent is the force and life is the source....

the_revelator wrote:

I thought the post by QAL in the book thread that links to Douglas Brinkley's interview with Dylan was revealing in terms of how impressive Dylan's formal knowledge seems to be, particularly Brinkley's thoughts on Dylan as someone aware of being an American artist who is interested in American art. But recall that he played England in 1966 with an American flag as a backdrop and claimed his music was "American music" - and was 25 years old at the time - so apparently he was hyperaware of wanting to have a place in that tradition even at 25.

I've said this before but I don't really want to get into a big fuss over all this again, but I sincerely hope that we can agree that his sources and interests are not limited or bound by the borders of the USA.

The only time he ever performed before the backdrop of the flag, as via photographic evidence of this well documented tour, was in Paris, France on his 25th birthday, two days short of the end of the tour. Personally, I perceived this as a provocation directed at the French and that country's traditional resistance to over-anglicazation.

There's a book called Catullus in English Poetry by Eleanor Duckett which traces something like 70 allusions to Catullus's work by pre-1650 English poets including Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare. She doesn't really explain how the writers were using specific allusions, but it's an interesting read.

Joined: Wed May 25th, 2011, 17:35 GMTPosts: 5532Location: .....down by the river

Johanna Parker wrote:

the_revelator wrote:

I thought the post by QAL in the book thread that links to Douglas Brinkley's interview with Dylan was revealing in terms of how impressive Dylan's formal knowledge seems to be, particularly Brinkley's thoughts on Dylan as someone aware of being an American artist who is interested in American art. But recall that he played England in 1966 with an American flag as a backdrop and claimed his music was "American music" - and was 25 years old at the time - so apparently he was hyperaware of wanting to have a place in that tradition even at 25.

I've said this before but I don't really want to get into a big fuss over all this again, but I sincerely hope that we can agree that his sources and interests are not limited or bound by the borders of the USA.

No one ever said Bob had no "sources and interests" outside the borders of the USA.> What was said was that Bob was honored to be awarded thePresidential Medal of Freedom and loves this country.

The fact is that Bob has enough money to live anywhere in the world he so chooses, but he chooses to live in the U.S. He's an American...why is it hard to understand that he loves America ?

Maybe you missed the wonderful things he had to say about Minnesota, and his feelings aboutthe U.S. in that interview with Brinkley. Here's the link to the interview.

Scott, I think you may be missing the forest for the trees. Or to quote Robert Polito, "But to narrow the Dylan/Timrod phenomenon...into a story of possible plagiarism is to confuse, well, art with a term paper".

For those interested, here is Polito's article on the allegations of Dylan's "stealing" from other authors. Polito certainly has more gravitas than I do ! I found the comments following the article to be particularly interesting.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/178703

Let me say that there is no insinuation you can make about Dylan's originality or writing techniques that will in any way diminish him in my eyes.

Nice find. Ha. And, we are in agreement. I am very fond of your posts here.Also, I was not referring to you when talking about those who deny... I was addressing JP's citing of such people.

I don't think I described any 'conscious working method' in my post and I don't know what 'folk process' means.

The label is traditionally attributed to Pete Seeger, who (in the late 1950s and early 1960s) tried to define the process of appropriation and adaptation of folk songs in a phase where many newcomers were arriving to the folk scene. Here's an excerpt from one of Seeger's writings of the time.

There are many definitions of folk music, but the one which makes most sense to me is the one that says it is not simply a group of old songs. Rather, it is a process, which has been going on for thousands of years, in which ordinary people re- create the old music, changing it a little here and there as their lives change. (Seeger 1965, in De Turk and Poulin 1967, 48)

The tricky thing is that the New York folk scene in the early 1960s had more an ideology of the folk-process than an attitude to work within the loose standards of the folk process itself. Issues of authorship and individual creation prevented the affirmation of a full-fledged folk-process for myriad reasons, not last the struggles to make it in the scene and the connections with publishers and record executives. It is quite difficult to reconstruct Dylan's relationship to the folk process.In my book I claim that holding such an ideology of the folk-process played a very important role in the connection of young folksingers to the idea of tradition, and Dylan was immersed in this ideology. Thus, I'd rather argue that he espoused some aspects of the folk process, notably its logic of appropriation, while not being able to realize it. Todd Harvey's The Formative Dylan is an excellent book on the subject.Seeger's definition has always stressed the ordinary, collective and in some ways anonymous character of this process, and what we see in Dylan is the bending of these idea as a means to affirm the individuality of the artist.

There are a lot of excellent histories of the folk revival which explain this dynamics better than I can do now. Just my two cents.

QAL, I have not highlighted any of this, I copied the post as it stood. Did you read the other things mentioned outside the travel guide? Why are you so hostile about this? Does it diminish Bob's achievements to you that he quotes from others?

Your questions insinuate that if only I were more well-read and intelligent then i would see the light.

Not at all. What I do insinuate though is your refusal to look beyond the edge of your own plate and refuse to see things that don't fit your conception of Bob. That's your choice, and from my pov your loss too, but I'm aware I won't change that. And that's the last I'll say to you about this.

Can you give an example of Eliot (note the one 'l') citing another poet, or a contemporary poet, in one of his poems, word-for-word?

Yeah, I have a Master's degree in English, so I know what reader-response is. And, again, I'm not concerned about the legalities of it at all.

To state it again: If Dylan uses a contemporary's entire sentence, or copies a paragraph, he has ample opportunity, in the sleeve notes of a record or in the preface to a book, to identity it. It would cost him nothing to concede what he copied.

Please note that there is a big difference, in the common perception, between being inspired by something poetically, and copying something word for word. I realize this distinction may be culturally influenced and have different schools of thought in different disciplines, but aside from all that it's simply the right thing to do.

Note on his first album, Dylan says "I learned this from Rick von Schmidt" and then sings "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" with von Schmidt's arrangement and lyrics. That's the right thing to do even though he didn't need to for copyright reasons. (He didn't do so, however, with "House of the Rising Sun".)

Hey, thanks for not really attending to what I wrote and repeating your original objection. I addressed your point directly back there somewhere. Good to know you can copy edit, though.

Others have taken up your request. I'll do some more when I have time.

So, you have a M.A. When you read, say Ezra Pound, or James Tate or Simic and they incorporated a line from another text, did they put footnotes in? Footnotes are for M.A. students, not for artists (unless the footnotes become part of the meaning of the text). Again, you have an M.A. in English (Lit.?) and you are saying all this to me? Of course, Dylan isn't even an academic poet. He's a very strange little man who writes popular songs and has taken up a poetic technique. He has no formal academic training. He's just picking it up from his reading. So, it won't conform to even the lawyer-enforced rules of sad, sad academia. FInally, in part, the point is for you notice the incorporation rather than to have it spoon fed to you with an annotated edition of LT. Back when Dylan got that song off of Rick von Schmidt in the green green pastures of Harvard University, he was following the conventions of the white, East coast folk singers. He's doing something else now. What did he say? It used go like that, but now it goes like this.

The contemporary art world, which Dylan is familiar with (including references by him to artist friends) has moved far beyond concerns about ownership of imagery and is now a vast field of 'appropriation' in which some artists have made careers by reproducing or heavily referencing already-existing work by other artists.

Here's a website for artist Sherrie Levine, an artist whose work is almost exclusively about appropriation. In 1979, Levine rephotographed Walker Evan's depression era portraits of the Burroughs, a family of sharecroppers. Included is an interview with Levine in which she explains how she arrived at this series, titled "After Walker Evans."

One of the great early experiments in 20th century 'appropriation' of a text is a story by Jorge Luis Borges (one of the masters of 20th Century literature) titled "Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote." Published in 1939, the story is a faux critical piece/false document in which the narrator discusses the work of the (fictional) author Pierre Menard, specifically Menard's attempt to completely immerse himself in Miguel Cervantes novel "Don Quixote" to the extent that he is able to produce a line-by-line recreation of parts of Cervantes novel.

The work by Menard which the narrator comments upon is word-for-word "Don Quixote" - or sections of "Don Quixote", exactly as written by Cervantes. The narrator judges Menard's "Quixote" to be more rich, subtle and creative than Cervantes work in light of the historical knowledge Menard possesses - unavailable to Cervantes in his time.

This story is a seminal work of modern fiction (and I feel sure Dylan is familiar with Borges). The story is the root of a school of modern literary criticism called "reader response" in which the person reading a story creates it's meaning through what the reader brings to the story (vs. the intentions of the author...). (Which means that the question of authorship is irrelevant to the meaning of the story). Almost all innovative modern/contemporary fiction writers have been beholden to this story, including Vladimir Nabokov, Robert Bolano, Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, William Gibson, Umberto Eco and Philip Roth.

Many major works of modern fiction are about the idea of 'ownership' of writing and 'context' which a reader or critic may supply to a work that makes the 'ownership' and 'intention' of the author irrelevant - or at least secondary to the response of the reader or critic.

The greatest writers of the 20th Century - and we can safely assume that Dylan knows their work well - addressed the ideas of ownership, appropriation, context, and author's intention in ways that subverted traditional ways of perceiving literature - James Joyce, Vladimir Nabokov, T.S. Eliot, Jorge Luis Borges.

It's almost impossible to discuss originality and appropriation in Dylan's work without familiarity with these writers because Dylan makes use of their themes and ideas. Dylan is as much a writer as he is a musician and it's as relevant to focus on modern literary influences in Dylan's work as it is to trace his musical influences back through blues, folk and roots music. And if you examine Dylan's work in that light, issues about copyright, ownership of language, and originality basically get pitched out the window. By the design of the writers who came before him and have influenced him.

Nice work by Death on Credit and MMD in discussing the same subject matter, which often involves heavy lifting.

Seeger's definition has always stressed the ordinary, collective and in some ways anonymous character of this process, and what we see in Dylan is the bending of these idea as a means to affirm the individuality of the artist.

I think that's where the Beats and Dylan's other literary heroes, e.g., Blake, and James Dean and Marlon Brando come in. Compulsive individualism.

Excellent posts, MMD and andrea75. Thank you both for contributing to a greater understanding and appreciation of Bob's art. I believe he expressed in an interview a few years ago, that people may not understand what he is doing for a hundred years (or something like that, I will see if I can find the quote.) The reducing of an artist's work to some kind of technical (or clinical?) deconstruction is a disservice to the artist and the listeners because a reaction to art, first and foremost, has to be a gut level or emotional recognition of it's worth.

Thanks. And I'd say that if Dylan's songs sucked, I would care very, very little about the writing style. It would be an interesting example I'd use in a lecture about a literate pop music writer. But we are all here because he makes great music. So, yes, raging.

Not at all. What I do insinuate though is your refusal to look beyond the edge of your own plate and refuse to see things that don't fit your conception of Bob. That's your choice, and from my pov your loss too, but I'm aware I won't change that. And that's the last I'll say to you about this.

JP, you are not following what QAL is saying. She is objecting to your implication that what Dylan is doing is plagiarism. The same objection I have made to your earlier posts.

Note also that there are real problems with this kind of Google pot luck search that turns up "matching" words and phrases. There is nothing significant about that. How do you know that those stock words and phrases in Dylan's writing are from that travel guide? What's the method of proving that?

Note on his first album, Dylan says "I learned this from Rick von Schmidt" and then sings "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" with von Schmidt's arrangement and lyrics. That's the right thing to do even though he didn't need to for copyright reasons. (He didn't do so, however, with "House of the Rising Sun".)

There's a difference between stealing and incorporating, and as I said Dylan may have stolen, illicitly, songs, etc. That is not what I have been talking about. I think his publishing of House of The Rising Sun was probably illicit given Dave van Ronk's work arranging it and redoing the chord structure. I think it's pretty clear Dylan thought so too. No Direction Home does a good job illuminating that. But incorporating Timrod or Roman poets into a pop song is not the same as taking van Ronk's arrangement wholesale. There is surely a line between stealing and incorporating. I've done my best (at this point) to mark that line.

The fact is that Bob has enough money to live anywhere in the world he so chooses, but he chooses to live in the U.S. He's an American...why is it hard to understand that he loves America ?

He's obsessed with America, always has been. Its music, its literature, its history, its myths, its sins. Probably why authors like Roth, Ginsberg, Delillo, Carol Oates, Morrison etc. who write mainly about America and Americans have responded strongly to him.

Note on his first album, Dylan says "I learned this from Rick von Schmidt" and then sings "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" with von Schmidt's arrangement and lyrics. That's the right thing to do even though he didn't need to for copyright reasons. (He didn't do so, however, with "House of the Rising Sun".)

There's a difference between stealing and incorporating, and as I said Dylan may have stolen, illicitly, songs, etc. That is not what I have been talking about. I think his publishing of House of The Rising Sun was probably illicit given Dave van Ronk's work arranging it and redoing the chord structure. I think it's pretty clear Dylan thought so too. No Direction Home does a good job illuminating that. But incorporating Timrod or Roman poets into a pop song is not the same as taking van Ronk's arrangement wholesale. There is surely a line between stealing and incorporating. I've done my best (at this point) to mark that line.

Yeah, that was plain theft, he must've figured that "It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."

yes, with a sweater and a glob of brylcreem. bob has to give credit on the liner notes for everyline didnt come out outta his super ego. good luck with that. maybe apple records can go back 35 years and give credit to that honorable mr kite poster.

the music business is like a small town where everyone leaves their door open. everyone knows that if you try to break in youll end up shot and robbed before you swing open the picket fence.

That is what people are upset about, not the fact that he borrowed them.

Why aren't they upset with Muddy Waters and Blind Willie McTell and Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson and Lead Belly too, then? Maybe they don't realize that's what they all did as well?

I think it has more to do with an inaccurate image of Dylan and the nature of his "originality" or "authenticity" or "genius" having been built up in the popular mind and people then thinking that it's somehow his fault that he doesn't live up to it.

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